Middle East and North Africa

Grahame Morris Excerpts

Thursday 17th July 2014 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Percy]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. It is incredibly sad that the situation is such that civilians have been used as human shields. It is distressing that on Hamas’s Facebook page, the Ministry of the Interior and of National Security has advised Gazan citizens to ignore Israel’s warnings to get out. There are even “knock on the door” mortars fired in advance of an attack to warn Gazans of an impending strike but, sadly, Hamas is officially—

[Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

rose—

[Robert Halfon]

rose—

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[Andrew Percy]

The hon. Lady puts it perfectly. That is a strategy.

I will move on because time is pressing. What would we do in such a situation? If 65% to 75% of our population was in range—

[Grahame M. Morris]

rose—

[Andrew Percy]

I will not give way to the hon. Gentleman.

[Grahame M. Morris]

I only want to make a friendly intervention.

[Andrew Percy]

All right. I will give way to the hon. Gentleman, even though he has not been here for the whole debate.

[Grahame M. Morris]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who is a fellow member of the Select Committee on Health. I apologise for being late; I was presenting a petition at No. 10 Downing street. He is outlining a scenario that has made me wonder: if he had been Defence Secretary at the time of the IRA bombings, would he have advocated the carpet bombing of east Belfast or Kilburn?

[Andrew Percy]

No, but I would expect my Government to do all that was required to defend their citizens, particularly when the country is a democratic state. That is why I hope Israel will take the necessary steps, to the utmost and to the end, to defend its people and track down terrorists. We are talking about a terrorist organisation as defined not only by the state of Israel but by this country. I would absolutely expect my Government to respond forcefully to such acts of aggression.

I will end shortly because I know that time is pressing, although I would have liked to say something about the humanitarian situation and assistance to Gaza. We all agree that the situation is terrible. I hope that the Minister will continue to affirm this country’s commitment to Israel’s right to defend itself, and that he will push even harder to achieve progress in the middle east, as the right hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire said. The situation must not continue, on either side, for much longer. There must be a renewed emphasis on peace, and rockets on either side will not achieve that. I hope the Minister will confirm the Government’s stance on that matter. Of course, he is new to his role, and I congratulate him on it.

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[Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure, as always, to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sheridan. I think that I explained the reasons why I was late, and I apologise to the right hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) for being late and congratulate him on securing this important debate.

Unfortunately, at this late stage of the debate much of what I was planning to say has already been covered, so I will spare the Minister and the other Members who remain the injustice of hearing the statistics repeated. However, I would like to say that this issue is not only one for the Palestinian or the Arab diaspora here in the UK and in the rest of Europe. I am the MP for Easington and I declare an interest as chair of Labour Friends of Palestine and the Middle East, because I want to speak about the situation in Gaza and Israel.

This is a social justice issue. I heard many of the comments that Members made today, and frankly some sense was spoken on all sides. However, when someone starts to stretch the truth too thinly, people—even ordinary people and people of limited intelligence such as myself—can start to see through it, and that is starting to happen.

We are at a tipping point for the middle east. The UK Government have a critical role to play, and members of the wider international community could act as honest brokers for peace and take some practical action to tackle the root cause of the conflict, which is—let us be plain about it—the illegal occupation of Palestine. Tackling that would prevent extremism from escalating on both sides.

I will echo the comments not of a member of my party but of the right hon. Gentleman’s party, who spoke during this week’s exchanges following the urgent statement and told the House that he had heard the same responses to the same events for 30 years. I think that was the right hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Sir Nicholas Soames).

[Alistair Burt]

Yes.

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[Grahame M. Morris]

The right hon. Member for Mid Sussex said that he had heard the same responses for 30 years. I ask the Minister this: is it not beyond time that the international community, with Britain at the forefront, lived up to its obligation to end this humanitarian disaster? For 30 years we have seen this happening, and we are having the same debates over and over again, with no progress to report. We can no longer continue to focus exclusively on negotiations. I will do everything I can—I think I will be protesting outside the Israeli embassy on Saturday—to further the cause of peace and a ceasefire. We have to go beyond focusing on negotiations. We cannot continue to ignore the main barriers to peace, which include the failure to hold Israel accountable for its human rights violations. The annexations—

[Mrs Ellman]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Grahame M. Morris]

I will give way only once, because I am very short of time.

[Mrs Ellman]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way. There is no doubt that in this long-running tragic dispute there is fault on all sides. However, does he think that the Palestinians are in any way culpable for jeopardising the possibility of peace, when after the Oslo accords were signed the Palestinian Authority—under the leadership of Yasser Arafat—unleashed a series of suicide bombings on the young people of Jerusalem?

[Grahame M. Morris]

I was going to come on to the Oslo accords and their consequences. I know that my hon. Friend raised issues earlier relating to some of the things that had happened—the reactions and so on—but we have to move on. It is 20 years since Oslo. On the undertakings given, particularly in respect of the withdrawal from Gaza, we are talking about illegal settlements that were set up by Israel and were against international conventions.

The Deputy Prime Minister recently acknowledged the collective punishments dished out to the Palestinian people, which have consequences in terms of brutalising people. As was said earlier, the current military action will, I am sure, degrade the capability of Hamas and other extremist groups to wage an armed campaign against Israel, but sadly it will be counter-productive, because it will radicalise many thousands, or potentially millions, of others in Gaza, the west bank and a number of countries, perhaps even in Europe. The Israelis, who hold all the cards and have all the power and might, have to recognise that the way to peace and justice for both Israel and Palestine is a just and negotiated settlement. We have to tackle the root cause, and we have to hold Israel accountable for its human rights violations, the annexation of Palestinian land and the continued expansion of illegal settlements; they are illegal in international law.

I have had the opportunity to go and see some of these settlements. I was accompanied by Jewish human rights groups, who share the concerns of the international community about some of the things that have been happening, such as the infrastructure network being available exclusively to Israeli settlements and the restrictions on the water resources, which particularly affect the Bedouin Arabs. They have a miserable existence. When I went to see them, I had a vision of a “Lawrence of Arabia”-type situation, with lovely tents and so on, but they live in absolute squalor, moving from place to place, and they are restricted, with the Israeli authorities declaring areas—on a whim, it would appear—to be military training areas or national parks. That is just a clear abuse, and a collective punishment, and it has to stop if we are to see a just and lasting peace.

The Minister is new to his post and I wish him well, because we have had these arguments before, even though I have only been a Member of this House for four years. It is a serious issue and I do not mean to laugh, but his predecessor, the right hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire, will know that we have had lengthy debates and informal meetings, and we have tried every which way to push these things forward in a reasonable and businesslike fashion. I want the UK Government to be serious, and I hope that when my party is sitting on the Government Benches in a year’s time, we will be much more proactive.

We need to replace rhetoric with actions and demand an immediate end to the blockade of Gaza. We have heard from right hon. and hon. Members, including those who have visited Gaza, about the suffering of the people, and about the impact on the water supply, the sewerage system, and the hospitals. We must insist on an end to this blockade, and a complete freeze on illegal settlement growth. We must also halt trade with and investment in illegal Israeli settlements in the west bank. We should support a phased approach to ending the occupation of the west bank and East Jerusalem, and have greater international mediation, with a larger role for the EU. Most importantly, the international community must set out clear parameters, targets and consequences to the failure to end violations in order to make progress. I know that targets are not popular with the Conservatives, but those targets should include sanctions when Israel does not comply.

We must understand the crisis in the wider context, which is a seven-year blockade of Gaza that has left its people facing an absolute humanitarian crisis. We had an excellent debate here in Westminster Hall, in which the impact of that crisis was elaborated on, but it is time to go beyond rhetoric. We need action from the British Government; they must take a lead.

[Jim Sheridan (in the Chair)]

Order. Before calling the Front-Bench spokesmen, I point out that Mr Burt has indicated that he would like three minutes to wind up the debate after both Front-Bench spokesmen have spoken, if that time can be factored in.